Hello Fess - I'd like to know too - finding USB2.0 powered hubs is getting difficult! I'd have thought that being a powered hub it shouldn't be making impossible demands on the Montage, so should work, but my grasp on these techie things is tenuous at best ...

Hey Rod, there should be plenty of bandwidth to allow uninterrupted audio and MIDI streams to pass through but I have no idea really...just hoping for the best. Just thought I'd add that Elektron's 'Overhub' is exactly that- a powered hub, and I think it's only a 2.0 hub. Even so, I believe user's are able to stream 8 channels of audio simultaneously. I think I've read somewhere that the USB 3.0 bandwidth limit is 10X more than 2.0 so there shouldn't be issues...in theory, of course:)

Montage plays well with USB 2.0 in general.

Anything other than a USB flash stick (one of the types qualified by Yamaha in the supported/tested list) would be considered non-suggested/non-supported use.

That said - USB2.0 hubs have been seen as fine.

I use a USB 3.0 hub and it works fine. You do not make anything faster by using USB3.0 vs USB2.0. A USB3 hub has to operate in USB2.0 mode when communicating with an upstream USB2.0 host. This 10x bandwidth business doesn't pan out because the host (Montage) at USB 2.0 is still limiting the bandwidth.

All of the above is my assumption the USB hub is plugged into the "USB to device" port.

When you mention USB3.0 hub and audio - now I'm thinking you're talking about the "USB to host" port since this connects to a PC and delivers the digital (USB) audio channels. I've never put a hub on this connection. I'm not sure why you would need a hub other than if your USB cable is not long enough and you need to extend or your PC is out of ports and your PC needs to have a hub in order to connect Montage and other devices together to the same USB port. I would not recommend this. Because anything else with traffic on the same USB path is going to "steal" bandwidth along the channel. I'd look to put the hub somewhere else on your computer and share other devices - leaving the Montage (usb connection = to host) to PC connection as point-to-point without a hub.

If you need to extend the cable - I have a very long cable. It's perhaps 10 or 15 foot. Getting a longer cable would be preferable to using a hub if the longer cables works for you.

Thanks for the reply Jason, I have the hub plugged into a 3.0 port of a laptop, so while it can't transfer the audio any faster (unless Montage can bounce audio, which I don't think it can) the 3.0 hub can handle much larger amounts of data overall: USB 2.0 - 480 Mb/s, USB 3.0 - 4.8 GB/s . I'm thinking a couple of dongles and a MIDI controller plugged into the hub still leave a huge amount of bandwidth to go around. If possible I don't want to plug the Montage directly into a laptop port. Anyway, I'll try it out sooner or later.

You're at the mercy of the USB hub (and traffic of all other devices) with this configuration. Not all hubs necessarily have USB-sig certification. A poorly implemented hub, for instance, may see one USB2.0 connection and downshift all ports to USB2.0. My solution is I have a docking station which has a USB2.0 cable connected to a USB port (they're all USB3.0 capable) with no hub between and the other end of the cable connected to Montage's USB to Host port. When taking the keyboard mobile, I unplug everything (pedals, audio connections, USB) and restore the connections when I lug the keyboard back into the studio.

I see this doesn't work well for you maybe because you have more limited ports. Maybe even just one USB port. My advice is if you have a few ports to "swizzle" around ports so your USB flash sticks/dongles/MIDI controller (assuming MIDI controller is MIDI only) share a hub on a different port and leave Montage dedicated.

As mentioned the bandwidth bottleneck comment I made was limited to the Montage USB "To Device" port. So you are correct that, theoretically, you can have USB3.0 bandwidth - one of the data "pipes" as the Montage USB "to host" port - and other "pipes" as keys and other things which - if all combined cannot exceed USB3.0 bandwidth may be OK. In practice, there are other variables which are difficult to generalize that can bite you in this scenario.

This is a sort of "make sure to wear your helmet when you ride the motorcycle" type advice. So you can ignore this and maybe that will work - happily riding the motorcycle in style without incident. Nothing is going to "blow up" if you use a hub - so experimenting and determining if the setup works for you is fine.

The other consideration is that every "hop" you insert into the USB data path is going to introduce latency. Just keep in mind at some point, depending on your usage model, you can start to turn the "delay" dial up to a point where what you're trying to do doesn't work any more. There's a big difference in goals using USB (digital) audio. Some use it as a "real-time" interface - some use it to "build" non-real-time projects. So how this affects you depends somewhat on how you use Montage with your PC.

Just FYI, the use of a Hub is not recommended.

Thanks Jason, BM

it's an externally powered 3.0 hub connected to a USB 3.0 port on my laptop. The hub itself hosts 2 dongles and a MIDI controller. I know MIDI data is much smaller than audio data, therefore uses much less bandwidth. Dongles communicate with their respective soft wares. My reasoning is that at this point I am only using a tiny amount of the available 4.8GB/s bandwidth. Latency I can deal with, but not audio dropouts. Anyway, no need to waste any more of your time fellas- I'll test it soon.